I'm eating about 700-800 calories a day but I'm not losing any weight.
There could be a number of reasons why a person would struggle to lose weight and the typical explanations could include…it’s hormonal…it’s my slow metabolism…it’s my body type…to name just a few. However, the main reason that a person would struggle to lose weight is that they have a fatty liver!
What's a Fatty Liver?
Simply put, whenever we eat sugar or highly processed carbs (bread, pasta, rice, potatoes and noodles for example), this sugar has to be dealt with by the body and therefore insulin is raised and each sugar molecule is stored in the body. But remember that while insulin is raised, the body is in fat storage mode! Eventually, the body will run out of places to store this fat and when this happens, the liver begins to store glucose in itself. This causes the liver to expand and as it gets bigger, so do our bellies – if you have a big belly, you most definitely have a fatty liver.
Get Healthy First
If you’re not losing any weight, you need to get healthy first and part of that process is healing the fatty liver. There are two things that we can do to fix this issue and they are:
1) Follow a Ketogenic Lifestyle.
2) Follow an Intermittent Fasting Regime.
So for number one, we need to drastically cut the amount of carbs that we are consuming (less than twenty grams per day in some cases) and replace them with healthy high fat and moderate protein.
For number two, we need to close our ‘eating window’ so that we are NOT eating for many more hours than we ARE eating. For example, let’s suppose that we eat our last meal at 7:00 pm and that we do not snack before bed! We then go to bed at 10:00 pm and sleep for eight hours. We then wake up at 8:00 am and have breakfast – meaning that we haven’t eaten for thirteen hours. This would be a thirteen hour fast.
How Does this Work?
When we are not losing any weight, it is normally because we are consuming too many carbs/sugar and consequently our insulin levels remain high for too long. However, once you follow a ketogenic plan, incorporated with intermittent fasting, our insulin levels stay low and while they are low, our bodies switch to fat burning mode – and that is why it is so easy to lose weight without even having to exercise!
Am I a Prediabetic?
There could be one added complication to this not losing any weight issue and that is if we are insulin resistant. This is where we have consumed a poor quality (high carb) diet for so long that the body begins to reject the glucose and insulin molecules and this creates a more serious scenario. It means that we are potentially prediabetic and if this situation is allowed to continue for much longer, we will likely end up as a full-blown Type 2 Diabetic. The good news is that keto and fasting can easily reverse prediabetes and they can also be used to effectively control diabetes. If you are already insulin resistant, you will still need to follow a ketogenic regime alongside intermittent fasting, but you may also have to include some prolonged fasting – such as 24, 36, 48 and even 72 hours.
This Really Works
One of our members at Gym 21 Liverpool had ballooned up to 23 stone (322 pounds) and he looked six months pregnant with a huge belly. In just ten months, he had lost 103 pounds of body weight and his stomach was flat as a pancake! I have come across many other examples of keto success stories and I encourage you to do your own research. It may seem quite a hard thing to do, but if you really are not losing any weight, I guarantee that keto and intermittent fasting will solve this challenge!
In this video, Doctor Berg discusses the best ways to heal a fatty liver…the primary reason for not losing any weight!
